— Homer Simpson commenting on painted rats in Rio de Janeiro, The Simpsons

Sometimes, humans in animation and video games have decidedly non-standard skin colors. Instead of being tan and brown, they'll be green, gray, and purple. But they're not the only ones—sometimes, animators have a bit of fun when designing animals as well. And thus, the world is filled with Amazing Technicolor Wildlife.

Animals are a bit different from humans—a lot of them do come in wilder, more flamboyant colors, especially in tropical areas. Animals use bright colors as a way of saying "Don't eat me! I'm poisonous!" or "Look at me! Aren't I a sexy beast?," or even for reasons we're not quite sure of. However, not all animals come in strange colors—a lot of mammals tend to be the same grayish and yellowish and brownish and reddish colors we humans are, with the brightest colors reserved for birds, insects, and fish. (A few reptiles here and there, too.) And while no one would bat their eye at a blue peacock with green tailfeathers, a red peacock with bright purple tail feathers would be distinctly more unusual. For instance, there is no green in mammals (unless you count fur tinted green because of algae) and blue is only found in a few mammal species (unless you count greyish-blue or a blue sheen). It just doesn't exist naturally. Funny Animals in particular seem to be prone to this through Typical Cartoon Animal Colors but turned Up to 11.

Sometimes animators exaggerate the range of colors, patterns, and markings found on each species of animal in Real Life. Several species of penguin, like the Fairy Penguin◊, have a naturally blue sheen to their feathers, but many animated penguins tend to be bright blue. There are other accepted variants from the range of colors, markings, and patterns each species of animal can have in Real Life, like solid-colored, non-tabby red cats.

Non black-furred (with or without white spotting) or all-white cats with black noses

Grey or black-furred cats with pink/red noses (with no white spotting on the muzzle or nose)

Stripes only on the back or at least a lack of stripes on the legs if there are any

White belly and/or chest (on the whole chest, not just a locket on the chest) without white paws

Black stripes on a Red Tabby (with or without white spotting)

Domestic Dogs

A black nose on a liver-colored dog

Giant Pandas

An all-black torso with or without a white belly

Black tails

Black all the way around the pelvic/hip area

Crustaceans

Bright red. Lobstersnote It is possible for a lobster to be naturally red or blue, or even different colors split down the middle, due to genetic defects. This is somewhat rare, though. and most crabs are only red if they're cooked. The Christmas Island red crabs are an exception.

Penguins

Bright blue feathers (as opposed to just a naturally blue sheen to their feathers)

Rats and Mice

Black, brown, or dark brown noses

Wolves

Red noses or any nose color except black

Solid brown or gray fur, with or without white spotting. Only black and white wolves have solid coloring, with others being agouti mixes of gray, brown, white, tan, and/or rust.

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Distinct and Outright Strange Examples:

For such a whimsically cute franchise about tiny, talking, magical animals, Jewelpet has surprisingly few impossibly colored titular pets. Out of over 40 pets, only a little over 10 are of strange colors. Jewelpet Sunshine has a non-Jewelpet animal called Iruka, a pink dolphin. When he turns gray, it's a sign that he's dying.

The majority of the animal characters in Happy Happy Clover from brown to pink colored rabbits to sky blue colored squirrels. It's more notable in the anime adaptation though.

Changeling aka Beast Boy from the Teen Titans is always green when he shapeshifts, which obviously stands out when he turns into any non-reptilian or -amphibian animal.

Douwe Dabbert is accompanied by a dodo on two of his adventures. While no one is completely sure what dodos looked like, they are generally described as brown or gray, so there's really no excuse for the dodo to be bright pink.

Subverted in Sonic the Comic. Yes, Sonic is blue, however he was Locked into Strangeness. He was born brown furred. One issue implied that the pink furred Amy was born brown too, however it is dubiously canon due to its numerous Series Continuity Errors. Most other characters are realistically coloured or are based on actual colours.

Mark Trail, a supposedly serious serial strip supposedly about nature and wildlife, nonetheless frequently features miscolored animals, such as ducks with green bodies and brown heads (instead of the other way around) and baby-blue chicks. Who often grow to the size of Buicks and talk out of their butts, but that's another issue.

The main character of My Cage, Norm, is a bright blue platypus. One of his friends is also an orange shark.

Granted, as mentioned in the Literature section above, we don't know what colour dinosaurs actually were, but nonetheless the characters from The Land Before Time are oddly brightly coloured. Cera (a triceratops) is bright yellow, Littlefoot (apatosaurus) is purple, Petrie (pteranodon) is red, and Spike and Ducky (a stegosaurus and parasaurolophus respectively) are different shades of green. Chomper (tyrannosaurus) from The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure and V: The Mysterious Island is purple.

Disney's Tarzan featured literalPink Elephants. Word of God says that the creators were inspired when they observed jungle elephants covering themselves in red dirt.

"Kevin" from Up is a 13-foot flightless bird with bright, iridescent plumage that, while not unusual for tropical birds, is nearly nonexistent among large flightless birds.

In The Sword in the Stone, the animals Merlin and Madam Mim transform into are blue and pink respectively, same color as their clothing. The animals Wart becomes are tan, which is somewhat less conspicuous.

Annabellle from All Dogs Go to Heaven is bright pink. She's an angel so it's likely that mortal colors don't apply to her. Her evil cousin (who's implied to be a Fallen Angel) Belladonna is a dark blue.

Films — Live-Action

The Wizard of Oz, offering many viewers their first glimpse of actual Technicolor, featured a "horse of a different color", which gradually changed from one color to another.

Avatar: Nearly all of the animals living in the dark green forests of Pandora are a brilliant shade of cobalt. This is Hand Waved through them blending in when the plants start to glow at night, but it still doesn't explain why they keep this color during the day (one would expect them to either change colors or for only the nocturnal species to be blue, but nope).

The picture book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See features a blue horse and a purple cat.

Another Eric Carle book, Hello, Red Fox, featured a green fox, a blue cat, a purple bird, a red snake, an orange fish, and a yellow butterfly.

Eric Carle Lampshaded this in his book The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse.

Elmer the Patchwork Elephant

Accidentally applied to a village full of Funny Animal wading birds in Chorus Skating, when Jon-Tom magically re-grows their lost feathers by revising the lyrics of songs about custom paint jobs on cars. Luckily, the altered birds get a real kick out of their new makeovers.

We don't know much about the coloring of prehistoric dinosaurs, admittedly, and as bird-reptiles they might not have been limited to the same colors as mammals. Still, in Dinoverse basically all dinosaurs are brightly colored and individual - ankylosaurs come in oranges and browns; tyrannosaurs are gray and blue, or emerald and rust, green and gray and purple and yellow, or deep green; leptoceratopses are yellow and red, or blue and gray again, or emerald, or purple and gold, or green and blue and emerald; quetzalcoatli are dark crimson and Day-Glo blue, gold with streaks of gray, blue, and scarlet, or yellow with streaks of crimson and midnight blue. Nothing at all is camouflaged. Our viewpoint characters, all from the modern day, find these colors unremarkable.

Pat the Beastie has a blue dog and a green bird that show up in the book to warn Paul and Judy about them mistreating their pet Beastie.

Spanish show El Perro Verde was a interview program that featured, indeed, a green dog.

Some of the characters on The Muppet Show. Sure, you had a green frog (Kermit) and a pink pig (Piggy). Rowlf was a brown dog - not too far-fetched there. But how does one explain Gonzo the Great as... uh... some kind of... turkey-anteater with a cornflower-blue... uh... covering?

Gonzo is a whatever/an alien. This trope still applies to other Muppets though. Fozzy Bear has a bright pink nose. Sam the Eagle is blue.

In Käpt'n Blaubär, the eponymous blue bear has three grandkids, who are pink, yellow and green respectively.

The Pajanimals features a green dog, an orange horse, a blue duck, and a purple cow.

The Mythbusters once tested if elephants are really afraid of mice while visiting a preserve in South Africa, and found to their great surprise that the idea seemed to have some merit, as the elephant they used backed away when a hidden mouse was uncovered. Unfortunately, the mouse they used was white, a color bred in pets and not likely to be found in the wild, especially a jungle. They later admitted this was a mistake, as they chose the mouse for its ability to show up on camera and didn't expect any real results from the test.

Psycho Pinball has several pink critters, including elephants, octopi, and an enormous pink whale.

Tabletop Games

Just open a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual or similar setting supplement. Even if you entirely ignore the various "magical" monsters borrowed from mythology (such as the couatl, a feathered serpent based on depictions of Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec god) and the color-coded dragons you will find e.g. an amazing technicolor dream-coated wolf with feathered wings instead of front legs (the Senmurv◊), and Tribex, horned beasts of burden that resemble African antelopes but with a bright blue stripe along its flank instead of a brown stripe (in the Eberron setting).

Theme Parks

Zigzagged with the animals in It's a Small World at the Disney Theme Parks. Some of the animals in the ride look completely normal, while others have a completely outrageous coloring; examples including a pink camel and an orange zebra.

Toys

Beanie Babies range from realistically designs and colors to more cartoonish designs with bright or pastel colors.

Care Bears also come in pastel colors. This works because they are not ordinary bears, but also have tummy symbols (belly badges), heart-shaped noses, and so on. The bears are Color-Coded Characters, though there are so many bears that some have similar shades. Some of the Care Bear Cousins also exhibit this trope; Bright Heart is a purple raccoon, Gentle Heart is a green lamb, and so on.

My Little Pony almost never has completely normal colored ponies. G1 also had a pink lion, pink and green zebra, purple and yellow elephant, and various other oddly-colored animals.

Artwork by Lisa Frank has featured pink and purple dolphins, purple pandas, and rainbow leopards.

Video Games

Many of the animal townsfolk in Animal Crossing are peculiarly colored, in almost every color imaginable. The quickest example? A bear called Bluebear. Guess what color she is.

Sonic in particular is famous for being a "blue hedgehog" ("The Blue Blur" being his nickname), but there are also pink, black and silver hedgehogs, purple cats, red echidnas, yellow polar bears, green tufted ducks, black armadillos with red shells, green hawks, the list goes on and on. Originally, Naoto Ooshima drew Sonic with black fur, but quickly changed it to blue so it would match the Sega logo.

The small animals found in the badniks of certain games are also oddly colored, such as purple peacocks with red tails, pink and purple elephants, pink seals, purple penguins, and blue gorillas.

There's the Yoshi species, which comes in a rainbow variety of colors.

Come to think of it, the Koopas [turtles] tend to be multicoloured as well, starting in the first game with the red ones.

There are some pretty funky Pokémon examples. True, they're technically not animals, but most are based on animals. A yellow mousenote the Pikachu line, a blue turtlenote the Squirtle line, a yellow and a blue duck/platypusnote the Psyduck line. And that's just the first generation of mons! Yeah, those critters cover the spectrum and back. Most Pokemon tend to be colored based on what sort of type they're supposed to represent, and even that isn't a hard rule. It also applied to the fictional critters themselves with the shiny Pokémon.

The dream eaters in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance are based on real and mythological creatures, and always unusually colored. The nightmare versions fought as enemies tend to use dark color schemes, while the friendly spirit versions are downright fluorescent. The latter can also be recolored to a limited degree by the player.

In Jet Set Radio, the GGs' dog Potts is blue in the first game, and green in JSRF.

Minecraft has sheep, which appear in the wild with colors that include white (of course), black, grey, brown (all plausible), and pink (plainly impossible in Real Life). Gets even more bizarre when colored dyes are added to the mix: Not only does a dyed sheep regrow its wool in the dyed color after being sheared, but if it's one of a breeding pair, it has a chance of passing on that color to its offspring.

You can choose all sorts of colors for your penguin, most of them being impossible in real life. The available colors for penguins are: red, yellow, green, lime, purple, pink, peach, light blue, aqua, brown, orange white, dark blue and black. Most, if not all mascots fall under this trope, with the closest to natural coloured being Gary and G Billy, who are dark blue.

Audience! is overloaded with strangely colored canines. Although most of the more fantastic ones are supernatural in nature. The Darkkies are a set of characters based on a single individual, Darkky. In order to stand apart from one another, they all have outlandish and eye-catching designs. There are also a few zombies, some eldritch abominations, and even a living Piñata. To be fair many of the characters, including the protagonist, have reasonably naturalist fur tones.

When you create a pet it can be red, green, yellow, or blue, but with magical paint brushes you get even more unusual colors. Paint brush colors include simple pink, brown, and purple... but they also include things like mutant, Darigan, robot, ghost, pirate, starry, cloud, fire, strawberry, and Christmas.

Petpet paint brushes let you do the same thing to your petpet only with fewer options. Petpets start out with a color/pattern that all members of that species are (such as a brown owl-like petpet) but can be changed to things such as rainbow and custard by using petpet paint brushes.

In All Dogs Go to Heaven Charlie and Anne Marie meet up with Flo to deliver pizza to her litter of orphaned puppies. Some of the said puppies are blue, pink, yellow, and bright green. The alligator they meet in the sewers is also bright green.

Blue's Clues, of course: Many of the animals are unusually-colored, and tend to be named after their color. Examples: Blue, Magenta, and Green (all dogs), and Periwinkle (a cat).

Some of the characters in Rocko's Modern Life have abnormal skin/fur color, such as Heffer, a steer, being colored yellow.

The pet platypus, Perry, is teal-colored with an orange bill. In a recent episode, it seems like all platypodes (in Danville, at least?) are the same color as theirs. According to Word of God, most viewers don't know much about the platypus, so they can take artistic license with the species.

Subverted in "Primal Perry", which showed a brown platypus.

The cave salamander from "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer" has brownish-yellow skin with spots. Real cave salamanders have a pale pink coloring.

Harry the Hyena from "The O.W.C.A Files" has purple fur, which is odd given the hyenas that appeared previously are realistically portrayed with brown-yellow fur. On the other hand, he has a darker shading on his muzzle, paws, and tail just like a real spotted hyena.

The titular equines of My Little Pony and later generations come in all the colors of the rainbow and then some. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is pretty reasonable with wild animals and some sentient non-pony species... but ponies come in all sorts of crazy colors, as do the griffons and dragons.

Semi-justified on The Wuzzles, given that each character was a crossbreed of two different species (although, oddly, each seemed to be the only one of its kind). Some of the color schemes were fairly reasonable for a "zoologically accurate" animated fantasy: "Bumblelion," for instance, was a half-lion, half-bumblebee creature, and had tan lion fur (correct) and brown and yellow bee stripes across his torso (close enough). But then again you had his pal "Rhinokey," who was a rhinoceros-nosed monkey with carnation-pink fur.

The cast and background characters of Oggy and the Cockroaches who are animals have this: The cats; Oggy is blue, Jack is green. The cockroaches; Dee Dee has a blue body and orange head, Marky has a grey body and green head and Joey has a pink body and purple head. Characters such as Olivia and Bob, on the other hand, avert this.

In Eek! The Cat, the titular character has purple fur, his girlfriend Annabelle is pink, and Sharky the Sharkdog is gray. Also, The Incredible Elmo is brown, and Mittens is blue colored.

In Tinga Tinga Tales, almost none of the animals are their natural colour: Lion is blue, Elephant is purple, the monkeys are red, orange and yellow, Hippo is black, Giraffe is black with white spots, Warthog is green, etc.

The titular protagonist of Steven Universe has a pet pink lion. Justified because Lion is magical, and is implied to have been an ordinary lion who was resurrected by Rose Quartz and given these powers by her healing.

None of the horses in Rainbow Brite have realistic colors. The closest is Starlite, who has white fur but a rainbow colored mane. Starlite was originally completely white but was Locked into Strangeness.

Num Nums from The Zhu Zhus is a purple hamster, and Chunk is a light blue hamster, while Pipsqueak and Mr. Squiggles have exceptional colors.

Kaeloo gives us Pretty and Eugly, two rabbits with pink fur. Averted with the main four however since they are normally colored.

Strawberry Shortcake and her friends' pets in the 80's were several different hues. Custard the cat is pink, Pupcake is a brown dog, but his ears are white with green stripes, Rhubarb the monkey is magenta, there's a panda who is white and purple, etc.

Real Life

Reef wildlife typically consists of any of the (and often times, multiple) colours of the visible light spectrum.

Averted: Most depictions of dinosaurs tend to color them in various shades of brown—and until fossilized samples of dinosaur skin were unearthed, their skin tended to have no texture to them.

Played straight in real life. They have actually managed to figure out a way to tell what color dinosaurs were. (or at least the feathered ones.) They have tested two so far; the first one, Sinosauropteryx, was orange with white stripes, the second, Anchiornis, was black, with mottled white and a rufous mohawk. Confuciusornis, a primitive bird, had varying shades of gray, white and orange. Sinornithosaurus was most likely orange and black. In any case, every species of dinosaur was very likely flamboyantly-colored. They, like all other reptiles, had great vision and likely relied on visual signals and bright colors to communicate.

There were some exceptions, including a weird subversion/inversion combo in the form of Microraptor. It was once thought that Microraptor would be a brightly colored species, like it's avian relatives. Later studies revealed, however, that Microraptor was actually an iridescent black color, like a starling.

The animals that lived alongside the dinosaurs, like pterosaurs and marine reptiles, also play with this trope in the media (and likely did so in real life). Pterosaurs often play this trope straight in media, especially the famous Pteranodon, with its large headcrest which may have been used as a brightly-colored mating display in real life. Marine reptiles often avert this in the media, and there is some evidence that they did so in real life as well; Ichthyosaurs (dolphin-like sea reptiles) were likely all black with variations depending on the species. Mosasaurs (large predatory marine lizards) were probably countershaded (dark on top and light below).

It's subverted as well. Although chameleons are famous for their ability to change colors, and use a pretty wide range of colors for camouflage and to communicate with one another, they cannot instantly change into every color in existence despite what movies/cartoons would like you to believe.

Several kinds of snakes have bright colors; most of them are venomous snakes or mimics of venomous snakes. However, there are brightly-colored nonvenomous snakes such as blood pythons and rainbow boas, and Amazing Technicolor morphs of ball pythons and corn snakes are becoming increasingly popular in the pet trade.

This trope plays a variant with mammals. Nearly all mammal fur come in varying shades of browns, grays, oranges, blacks and white, while bright shades of pinks, purples, blues or greens is almost unheard of (sloths appear green due to the algae in their fur). This is due to most mammals having poor color vision and having only 2 kinds of pigments (birds and arthropods have more). That being said, lots of mammals have evolved distinctive and complex patterns, such as spots, stripes and other markings. Primates have better color vision, and a few species have more colorful patterns then most mammals (but not as complex as birds).

Reptiles vary a lot. Some can be especially colorful, while others are drab in comparison. It really depends on the behavior of the animal and if they use colors for communication.

Played straight with many species of fish, but averted with sharks, except for some notable exceptions like the wobbegong and carpet shark.

Blue, White and Golden lobsters and crabs. Often caught and and kept for pets or tourist attractions. They don't survive long in the wild, due to to the oddity of their coloration.

Most frogs and toads are dark green or brown, but dart frogs are amazing technicolor wildlife; most are a combination of black and a bright color, but the golden mantella frog is named after its color.

While the lionesses in The Lion King are more or less offset from realistic lion colors, the males are either bright gold with cherry red manes or extremely dark with completely black manes. This is played straight during the musical number "I Just Can't Wait to be King", though; it wouldn't be a Disney Acid Sequence otherwise!

Jenna from Balto is a bright red Husky, as are most of her and Balto's children in the sequels. "Red" is an actual Husky colour however it's more of a brownish or burnt orange colour than the deep red Jenna is.

Literature

Bluestar from Warrior Cats is one of the very few cats in the series to be described as "blueish-grey" looking. Her children and other cats are "grey". It's possible that Bluestar has some Russian Blue in her. They're a cat breed often described as blue-looking.

Puppet Shows

Fozzie from The Muppets is a bright orange bear (although he referred to himself as "light brown" in one episode).

Theater

Most productions of Cats portray Bombalurina as a bright red cat. As in scarlet.

Color options with the pet system for Kingdom Hearts X introduced in 2017 have included blue, pink, green and gold. They are said to be spirits and thus aren't real animals.

Western Animation

The Backyardigans features an orange moose named Tyrone and a blue penguin named Pablo.

The five major animal characters in Littlest Pet Shop (1995) include a blue dog, a purple cat, a pink rabbit and a yellow horse. Only the brown monkey has a normal fur color.

All of the frogs from Kulipari: An Army of Frogs look pretty similar in chose of color to frogs in real life—even the Kulipari, who are all dart frogs. The only exception is that the Kulipari tend to glow when they use their superpowers.

Larry the Lobster from . Yes, lobsters can be bright red, but not live lobsters... only cooked ones. May be a case of The Coconut Effect.

Squidward Tentacles is a blue-green octopus, but octopi only look that color because of the sea tint. "Reef Blower" shows him to be purple above water as a justification. However he remains green in his other out-of-water appearances, such as in "Pressure" and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

Rigby from Regular Show is entirely brown, but actual raccoons have gray fur with occasional brown hairs. However, some are more noticeably brown than others.

Oggy and the Cockroaches: The cast and background characters who are animals have this: The cats; Oggy is blue, Jack is green. The cockroaches; Dee Dee has a blue body and orange head, Marky has a grey body and green head and Joey has a pink body and purple head. Characters such as Olivia and Bob, on the other hand, avert this.

The Wild Puffalumps have a group of multicolored jungle animals consisting of a pink toucan, a sky blue elephant, a dark blue walrus, a yellow monkey, a maroon tiger, a magenta rhino, and a white and cerulean panda.

Kate & Mim-Mim takes place inside a little girl's imagination, so it's not surprising that there's a rainbow of different characters. Mim-Mim is purple because that's the color of her stuffed bunny to begin with. Other main characters are pink, blue, brown and orange.

Some breeds of dogs, cats, and horses come in a color referred to as "blue." It is actually a shade of gray with a very faint bluish tint.

Poodles will sometimes, just for yuks, be dyed in vibrant colors for special occasions (green for a Saint Patrick's Day parade, for instance). The dyeing agent is usually unmixed Kool-Aid powder.

Some chinchillas are described as blue or purple, although their actual fur color is closer to gray with a bluish or purplish tinge.

In 2014 a stray cat in Bulgaria was found walking the streets with bright green fur. While it was originally thought to be the result of vandalism it turns out the the cat had slept on discarded synthetic paint in someone's garage.

Owners of pet rodents sometimes use pet-safe dyes to mark the fur of individual animals that would otherwise be difficult to tell apart, such as albino mice.

Wildlife rescuers have experimented with dyeing the pelts of deer bright orange before releasing them, in hope that hunters will mistake the color for a fellow-hunter's safety jacket and hesitate before shooting the animals. Naturally they don't do this in regions where wild predators still pose a greater threat to deer than humans, as it spoils the animal's stealth until the dye wears off.

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